he had found in the last redoubt they’d jumped to and puffed the smoke to life. He cast a swift glance at Mildred.
The woman repressed a grin. His apprentice knew his soft spots, for sure.
His occasional smoking didn’t please her as a twentieth-century physician, even one who preferred research to hands-on doctoring—before she got wakened from her cryosleep into a brutal, desolate world where “healing” was her number one marketable skill, that is. But she’d long since lost the heart to chide him for it, other than a slight frown.
Realistically, she didn’t count on any of them living long enough for cancer to take them. In Deathlands, sudden death wasn’t just a constant possibility. It was an immediate reality.
“Right now,” Ryan said softly, “we’ve got no evidence I can see that anybody’s on our tails. Here, anyway.”
“But those pale shadows know where our dig site is, certainly,” Doc stated.
“Yeah. But they haven’t shown up around here, yet.”
“Yet,” J.B. echoed.
It was Ryan’s turn to shrug.
“We’re not on the last train west yet, either. Even if the locals are after us, too, they don’t know where either place is.”
Ryan had chosen a campsite a mile or so from the sinkhole that had swallowed the predark trove. It was a fine site, as comfortable as it got sleeping rough—and better than a lot of buildings they’d bunked in, Mildred knew all too well. The cave provided shelter from the frequent rains as well as from casual observation. A little stream ran along the base of the sandstone outcrop that formed their current home. And even though it was a pain humping back and forth each day to the excavation, the separation ensured that even if one location was compromised, the other wouldn’t be.
As the fact that the pale shadows had found the dig but not this place—as far as they could tell—attested to. Though with Jak on the job, she wasn’t concerned they might be under covert observation. Just because even he couldn’t track them here on their home range—whatever the hell-on-earth they were—didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to spot them if they came creeping around here.
But now something was eating at her, too, in spite of the fact that she, like Krysty, badly wanted to stay here as long as possible. Even if this wasn’t going to be a final, permanent safe haven—unless of course they left their bones here in the Pennyrile—they were all riding the ragged edge of exhaustion. Not so much the physical sort, but the kind brought on by constant stress.
The stability they’d enjoyed for the week or so that they’d worked the sinkhole had visibly restored them all, despite the hot and arduous labor every day brought.
“If the locals think we’re murderers,” she pointed out, “how can we stay here? I mean, we need somebody to trade with.”
“We can conceivably work the excavation for a few more days,” Doc said, “until, as Ricky observes, we get to the most valuable relics. At that point we can pick the most portable and valuable items, and then head out of the area. It’s not as if we have not done that a score of times already.”
“But Conn,” Ryan said, “the man we’ve been mostly trading with, seemed triple far from convinced we had anything to do with that girl’s murder.”
“But the girl’s sister was certain we did it,” Krysty added. “And she did manage to convince some of the locals that we were guilty.”
That was another thing about Krysty. She had her druthers, same as everybody—in particular, the longing for stability—but she was wise to the bone, as well. She saw both sides to every coin, and she spoke the truth as she saw it, always.
At least to her friends. She could lie with the best of them to an enemy, as all of them could. And did.
“And Conn poured cold water on that.”
“Not Wymie,” Krysty said.
“No. She’s got her heart set against us. But Conn managed to get some doubts in other people’s minds. I don’t think we got the whole county roused against us.”
“Yet,” J.B. said. It was becoming a theme for the evening. “But she’ll get around to coming and hunting for us, and that’s a triple lock for sure.”
“She in all probability will not come alone,” Doc said. “She showed herself to be quite persuasive, in her vengeful wrath.”
For a moment they sat in silence. A bat fluttered just outside the mouth of their cave, chasing the insects drawn by the firelight. A distant screech-owl trilled mournfully. The night smelled of moist earth and cooling, sun-warmed rock, along with the more acrid smoke of their fire.
“Then we should find evidence to clear ourselves!”
Everybody turned and looked at Ricky. His brown eyes were wide. His round cheeks showed a decidedly red flush on top of their usual olive color.
“S-sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean—”
“Kid,” J.B. said, “haven’t you learned by now, that if we let you run with us, we let you speak your mind?”
“When there’s mind involved,” Mildred said, “and it’s not just a matter of words popping into your head and rolling right out your mouth.” She liked the youth, well enough. He was a solid companion, a surprisingly good fighter and painfully smart. But he was still working on developing any damn sense, in her view.
“Ease off,” Ryan said without heat. “Clearly you got something in mind, Ricky. So let’s hear it.”
“We know we’re not guilty, and it’s a fair bet these albino creatures are what killed Blinda,” Ricky said. “After all, what she described seeing, that made her think of Jak—that looks just like what we saw.”
“What little of them we saw,” J.B. added. “But true enough.”
“So we need to find evidence it was them who did it, and not us! And then this Wymie will shift her hate off us and onto them.”
“People don’t always let go of that kind of anger easy,” Ryan said. “Even when there is evidence. Anyway, what evidence did you have in mind?”
“Well, we chill one, and take in the corpse. That’ll show them. And I bet even Wymie will admit these things are more likely to have murdered her little sister than we are.”
“Right you are, lad!” Doc exclaimed.
“But there’s a problem,” J.B. said. “We know we hit one of the things back at the dig. Chilled one, mebbe. Mebbe even more, but we found nothing but the blood trails.”
Ricky shrugged. “Maybe there’s other evidence we could find.”
“Or mebbe we could do a better job chilling one and keeping hold of it,” Ryan said. “Rather do that than cut stick and run, on balance.”
Krysty smiled. After a beat, Mildred joined her. Her friend knew her man well. You could tell Ryan had just made up his mind—if you knew the signs to look
